BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL

This one and its predecessor are supposed to be the height of Jane's prog achievements. Like their countrymen Birth Control , Jane felt that by the mid-70's , they should recycle their good hard rock into prog rock. Both bands started to write more ambitious tracks and both bands were only partially succesful at it.

I must say that most of the reviewers comparing them to Floyd or Eloy are overdoing it a little. There are hints of Floyd, yes, but this does not come to knee height. The title track has moments that directs your brains to Atom or Saucerful albums in its first part but there is hardly nothing worth remembering in the first ten minutes , abruptly and clumsily ended to start with some Gregorian chants in the second part. This second part is much better and probably the highlight of the album.

Side 2 is made up of a great old-Jane track Twilight but the rest of the tracks are simply fill- in stuff and again some very clumsy chord progression (I am not sure we can qualify those as abrupt changes as such but this is very clumsy) should make most progheads cringe.

IMHO , both Jane and birth Control lost a bit of their credibility and their purposes to veer off their excellent Hard-Prog (or Prog'N Roll) to do progressive albums. It just sounds too much like they were jumping on the bandwagon and somehow lost their soul while doing so.

All right , Give another halfstar.